Where it happened: Apple Orchard
Langauge: English
Sex: Male
Rating: 5
Category: Straight
The rest of the waning summer melted away as the prospect of a new school year at the upper school—real high school—took possession of our thoughts and became the focus of our uncertainties and apprehensions.
After school got underway, my friend John revealed to me with what I considered excessive boasting, the details of his first encounter with a local girl named Carey—about how they had been alone at his home without his parents or siblings around. He captivated me with stories of how they had danced to slow music in his living room and how he had surreptitiously rubbed against her.
I denounced his story with anemic conviction, jealous of the certain facts. Incensed at my veiled disbelief and anxious to authenticate his assertion, John proposed I go on a date with Carey to see if I couldn’t duplicate his good fortune. His proposal laid bare my pretense, uncertainty and confusion. I didn’t want him to know that I was afraid and unsure of what to do and how to act. My only option was to readily agree to the plan with a show of bravado and worldliness.
The plan was hatched. John would fill Carey in on our scheme and I would ask her to the basketball game on the following Friday.
The fateful day arrived. I planned to walk to Carey’s house to pick her up for the short walk to the Field House where we were to watch the basketball game together. My scheme was momentarily diverted by my parent’s late decision to go to the basketball game and their insistence upon me driving with them. It was a memorably awkward moment in my life; to explain that I was going to meet a girl at the game and actually sit next to her the entire time. I felt weak and giddy. I knew they must be able to see right into my dark soul and the read the evil musings that defiled me and made their little boy a sex-crazed monster. My mother made some inane comment about me growing up and my father maintained his customary silence.
After my parents dropped me off, I made the short walk up the hill and across the main road running through the town to where Carey lived in a modern “A” frame. She answered the door and noiselessly slipped outside. I was relieved not to have to go through the ritual of saying hello to her parents especially since her mother was a distant cousin on my father’s side of the family—a relationship that made my secret intentions seem almost incestuous. Our walk to the Field House was tense and silent with no more than a few perfunctory words passing between us. God, I felt like a first-class jerk of a date. What was I supposed to say? Why didn’t she say anything? The already-ensuing game offered comfort that precluded any conversation. Besides, with my parents sitting in the bleachers directly across the court from us I felt as if the whole world was watching our every move.
When the game ended, Carey asked if I wanted to go “somewhere”. I lamely nodded and we disappeared with the milling crowd out the front door. I didn’t have to wonder long where we were headed. Carey grabbed my hand purposefully and we crossed the asphalt parking lot and headed toward the adjacent apple orchard. My heart was pounding out of fear of being seen by my parents or some other savvy adult who would report our hand-holding tryst making it the topic of cocktail conversation after next Sunday’s sermon.
The orchard was cool and musty in the late afternoon with the pungent odor of ripe and rotten apples mingling in the autumn air. The leafy branches hid our descent down a gentle slope toward the center of the orchard. I was wearing a plain black raincoat which I had carefully chosen as the only coat I had that was long enough to cover an erection. I knew I looked stupid in the coat but I could not always rely on the multiplication tables to deflate myself during some moment of unwanted excitement.
Carey stopped our journey about 40 yards into the orchard and moved toward one of the trees still heavy with fruit. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a Luden’s cough drop and popped it in her mouth. My God! She’s sick. How’s this going to work? I thought drearily. She passed the box of drops—menthol flavor—with definite instructions for me to take one. My hesitant reach caused her to explain that she would only kiss me if I took a cough drop to conceal the real (and by inference, disgusting) flavor of my mouth. How romantic! I faced the prospect of my first kiss with my tongue numbed and reeking of menthol.
We kissed. The wetness of our mouths sharing the olfactory fumes of Mr. Luden’s famous medication. I was so focused on the medicinal odor of our oral coupling that I felt no excitement—only fear of capture and uncertainty about what etiquette and necessary “coolness” required next. Also, I was trying to be sure to remember everything I could about “my first kiss.”
Carey ended the kiss and motioned that she would like to sit on the ground under the bountiful tree. She asked me to spread my raincoat on the ground as a protection from dampness. The thought came to mind of a gallant Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak over a puddle for the Virgin Queen to trample on. We clumsily sat on the inside liner of my coat and tried to find a sitting position comfortable enough to continue our antiseptic explorations. It was awkward and uneasy and soon we found it more comfortable to lay side-by-side.
After prolonged kissing and experimental rubbing, Carey asked tentatively if she could see what I looked like under my clothes, “close-up.” After registering my initial confusion, she confirmed confidently that I should take down my pants. It was a signal moment. I lost my breath and voice in a jumble of conflicting emotions. Burdened with strain to the moral breaking-point, I lay with my back on the ground and covered my eyes trying to think how “coolness” could overcome modesty or if there was some way to end this without being a jerk.
Since I said nothing, Carey took my lying on my back as a passive invitation to continue her initiative. I felt her hand unbuckling my belt and unzipping my pants. The sudden exposure of my underwear to the cool autumn air barely restrained my pulsing limb in silence. I was throbbing with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment as I raised my hips in a helpful gesture to help her peel off my underwear. I moved my hands back over my eyes in a rising mixture of shame and desire. She began with her hands touching me in an experimental, almost antiseptic, sort of uncertain way. The unpleasant memory of the medicinal aroma of menthol cough drops hung in the air. She began investigating me in earnest, like some new piece of equipment in chemistry lab—rubbing and moving, cupping and holding. I felt afraid and afraid to stop. The universe began to whirl and spin.
The sodium-vapor light from the nearby swim-club was boiling over the twilight chatter of insects. The trees were moaning in the gentle wind, and then I realized it was all my blood buzzing loudly in my ears in a rising crescendo of desire passing the point of no return. With a gasp, I erupted in a climax that startled and surprised me and drew an immediate, distant rebuke from Carey.
“What are you squirting all over the place for?”, she shrieked. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”, she demanded to know with panic and irritation rising in her throat.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled weakly as I recovered my senses, the euphoria subsiding. Humiliated. Ashamed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it would happen like this.”
“God, it’s gross. Why did you do it? It’s all over everything,” she wailed in despair and denial of her active participation.
I felt totally stupid, ashamed and used—like an experiment gone terribly wrong. I lay there among the fallen apples and uncut grass at the base of our tree suddenly shivering in the sharp cool duskiness of early Autumn, the fruits of our adventure liquefying on my bare stomach and seeping into the fabric of my shirt and raincoat liner. I cringed as I noticed a spreading stain on her light-brown blouse that could only have been a result of my mis-directed spray.
Carey was busy wiping her hands clean of me on the outside of my black coat. Oh great, I thought, what will my mother think when she sees all this stuff dried, crusty-white and caked against the black fabric of my coat? I determined at once to concoct a story about losing my raincoat at the basketball game—Shame is such a motivator of fable. And after the inevitable lecture about responsibility and caring for my possessions, they would believe the story and attribute my observable discomfort to adolescent carelessness, for which I already had a reputation.
I pulled on clothes hurriedly without regard to the dampness and musky smell of my scattered seed now permeating my attire. I was thankful for the pungent, camouflaging odor of the apple harvest rotting at our feet and that Carey seemed no longer interested in viewing me. She appeared even more intent on leaving the scene of our debacle than I.
“It’s OK,” she said as we both got up from the ground. “I can walk myself home. I just live up the road, not far you know.”
“I’m sorry,” I moaned, relieved from the gentleman’s burden of escort and uncertain of what else to say. Ashamed, I had fleeting thoughts of absconding to enroll in another school far away where I could start fresh. I would promise God to become a monk and live a life pure and without desire.
“I’m sorry for what happened. I didn’t mean…,” I trailed off weakly.
“I know,” she said. “I was scared. I didn’t expect you to… to do that,” she continued with the barest hint of reconciliation.
That was as honest as we could ever be with each other. We exited the orchard, silently and separately walking in the direction of our respective homes. I was never completely comfortable speaking with her again.
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